Saturday, 15 August 2015

Is Our Universe a Fake?

Is Our Universe a Fake?

by Robert
Lawrence Kuhn

I
began bemused. The notion that humanity might be living in an artificial
reality — a simulated universe — seemed sophomoric, at best science fiction.

But
speaking with scientists and philosophers on "Closer to Truth," I
realized that the notion that everything humans see and know is a gigantic
computer game of sorts, the creation of supersmart hackers existing somewhere
else, is not a joke. Exploring a "whole-world simulation," I
discovered, is a deep probe of reality.

David
Brin, sci-fi writer and space scientist, relates the Chinese parable of an
emperor dreaming that he was a butterfly dreaming that he was an emperor. In
contemporary versions, Brin said, it may be the year 2050 and people are living
in a computer simulation of what life was like in the early 21st century — or
it may be billions of years from now, and people are in a simulation of what
primitive planets and people were once like.

Philosopher
Nick Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford
University, describes a fake universe as a "richly detailed software
simulation of people, including their historical predecessors, by a very
technologically advanced civilization."

It's
like the movie "The Matrix," Bostrom said, except that "instead
of having brains in vats that are fed by sensory inputs from a simulator, the
brains themselves would also be part of the simulation. It would be one big
computer program simulating everything, including human brains down to neurons
and synapses."

Bostrum
is not saying that humanity is living in such a simulation. Rather, his
"Simulation Argument" seeks to show that one of three possible
scenarios must be true (assuming there are other intelligent civilizations):

His
point is that all cosmic civilizations either disappear (e.g., destroy
themselves) before becoming technologically capable, or all decide not to
generate whole-world simulations (e.g., decide such creations are not ethical,
or get bored with them). The operative word is "all" — because if
even one civilization anywhere in the cosmos could generate such simulations,
then simulated worlds would multiply rapidly and almost certainly humanity
would be in one.

As
technology visionary Ray Kurzweil put it, "maybe our whole universe is a
science experiment of some junior high school student in another
universe." (Given how things are going, he jokes, she may not get a good
grade.)

Kurzweil's
worldview is based on the profound implications of what happens over time when
computing power grows exponentially. To Kurzweil, a precise simulation is not
meaningfully different from real reality. Corroborating the evidence that this
universe runs on a computer, he says, is that "physical laws are sets of
computational processes" and "information is constantly changing,
being manipulated, running on some computational substrate." And that
would mean, he concluded, "the universe is a computer." Kurzweil said
he considers himself to be a "pattern of information."

"I'm
a patternist," he said. "I think patterns, which means that
information is the fundamental reality."

How could people
know?

If
people are in a whole-world simulation, how could they know it? Brin suggests a
"back door" in the simulation program that would enable the alleged
programmers to control people (much like countries accuse each other of
installing "back doors" in code to conduct espionage).

"If
we are living in a simulation, then everything is software, including every
atom in our bodies," Brin said, "and there may be 'back doors' that
the programmers left ajar."

I
asked Marvin Minsky, a legendary founder of artificial intelligence, to
distinguish among three kinds of simulations: (i) brains in vats, (ii)
universal simulation as pure software and (iii) universal simulation as real
physical stuff.

"It
would be very hard to distinguish among those," Minsky said, "unless
the programmer has made some slips — if you notice that some laws of physics
aren't quite right, if you find rounding-off errors, you might sense some of
the grain of the computer showing through."

If
that were the case, he says, it would mean that the universe is easier to
understand than scientists had imagined, and that they might even find ways to
change it.

"Well,
it's a bit flaky, but a fascinating idea," he said. "The real
question is what are the limits of computing powers."

Astronomers
are already doing simulations of parts of universes. "We can't do
experiments on stars and galaxies," Rees explained, "but we can have
a virtual universe in our computer, and calculate what happens if you crash
galaxies together, evolve stars, etc. So, because we can simulate some cosmic
features in a gross sense, we have to ask, 'As computers become vastly more
powerful, what more could we simulate?'

"It's
not crazy to believe that some time in the far future," he said,
"there could be computers which could simulate a fairly large fraction of
a world."

A
prime assumption of all simulation theories is that
consciousness — the inner sense of awareness, like the sound of
Gershwin or the smell of garlic — can be simulated; in other words, that a
replication of the complete physical states of the brain will yield, ipso
facto, the complete mental states of the mind. (This direct correspondence
usually assumes, unknowingly, the veracity of what's known in philosophy of
mind as "identity theory," one among many competing theories seeking
to solve the intractable "mind-body problem".) Such a brain-only
mechanism to account for consciousness, required for whole-world simulations
and promulgated by physicalists, is to me not obvious.

I
asked Rees whether human-level consciousness and self-consciousness can be
simulated.

"That
may be the kind of question that would demand a superhuman intelligence to
answer," which, he adds, "could be forever beyond our
capacity."

Physicist
Paul Davies has a different take. He uses simulation theory to tease out
possible contradictions in the multiple universe (multiverse) theory, which is
his countercultural challenge to today's mainstream cosmology.

"If
you take seriously the theory of all possible universes, including all possible
variations," Davies said, "at least some of them must have
intelligent civilizations with enough computing power to simulate entire fake
worlds. Simulated universes are much cheaper to make than the real thing, and
so the number of fake universes would proliferate and vastly outnumber the real
ones. And assuming we're just typical observers, then we're overwhelmingly
likely to find ourselves in a fake universe, not a real one."

So
far it's the normal argument.

Then
Davies makes his move. He claims that because the theoretical existence of
multiple universes is based on the laws of physics in our universe, if this
universe is simulated, then its laws of physics are also simulated, which would
mean that this universe's physics is a fake. Therefore, Davies reasoned,
"We cannot use the argument that the physics in our universe leads to multiple
universes, because it also leads to a fake universe with fake physics."
That undermines the whole argument that fundamental physics generates multiple
universes, because the reasoning collapses in circularity.

Davies
concluded, "While multiple
universes seem almost inevitable given our understanding of the Big Bang,
using them to explain all existence is a dangerous, slippery slope, leading to
apparently absurd conclusions."

Five premises to the
simulation argument

I
find five premises to the simulation argument: (i) Other intelligent civilizations
exist; (ii) their technologies grow exponentially; (iii) they do not all go
extinct; (iv) there is no universal ban or barrier for running simulations; and
(v) consciousness can be simulated.

If
these five premises are true, I agree, humanity is likely living in a
simulation. The logic seems sound, which means that if you don't accept (or
don't want to accept) the conclusion, then you must reject at least one of the
premises.

Which
to reject? Other intelligent civilizations? Exponential growth of
technology?

Not
all civilizations going extinct? No simulations ban or barrier? Consciousness
simulated?

Whichever
you choose, it must apply always, everywhere. For all time. In all universes.
No exceptions.

That,
to me, makes no sense.

Would
the simulation argument relate to theism, the existence of God? Not
necessarily.

Bostrum
said, "the simulation hypothesis is not an alternative to theism or
atheism. It could be a version of either — it's independent of whether God
exists." While the simulation argument is "not an attempt to refute
theism," he said, it would "imply a weaker form of a creation
hypothesis," because the creator-simulators "would have some of the
attributes we traditionally associate with God in the sense that they would
have created our world."

They
would be superintelligent, but they "wouldn't need unlimited or infinite
minds." They could "intervene in the world, our experiential world,
by manipulating the simulation. So they would have some of the capabilities of
omnipotence in the sense that they could change anything they wanted about our
world."

So
even if this universe looks like it was created, neither scientists nor
philosophers nor theologians could easily distinguish between the traditional creator
God and hyper-advanced creator-simulators.

But
that leads to the old regress game and the question of who created the (weaker)
creator-simulators.

At
some point, the chain of causation must end — although even this, some would
dispute.

Personally,
I do not think humanity is living in a whole-world simulation. But because the
simulation argument seems to work, what it seems to do is to uncover deep
discrepancies, or fundamental flaws, in how people think about deep reality —
about this universe, multiple universes, consciousness, and even inferences for
and against theism.

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6 comments:

Computers can no more reach a state of conciousness, than a human brain. Consciousness lies beyond the human brain and computers. The scientism/transhumanist movement is a drastic effort to create some form of life, due to the fact that we are destroying our habitat, through wreckless behavior,which is due to a lack of concsiousness. The Atheist scientists do no see anything higher than their own human mind/ego, therefore they think the mind is all that exists.

A wise reminder that a clone is not the original, and that continuation of consciousness is not a factor when a copy is made - using current terrestrial technologies. However, quantum entanglement and bilocation offer far more promising probabilities that superannuate these objections. Environmental destruction is the province of all who actively partake in today's blind moneygrubbing pseudocivilisation hives. Transhumanists are hardly worthy of singling out in that regard, except insofar as the escapism of such a perspective often implies., A theist believes in a god or gods. Atheists don't. That doesn't exclude other forms of' 'higher' consciousness. As for machine 'consciousness' - aye, emulation isn't identity, Yet as more advanced double slit experiments show, a machine CAN act as a conscious detector....

Consciousness or lack thereof cannot be defined, for it's very nature is based on intelligent source energy that transcends any kind of symbolic meaning. Destruction of our habitat is as natural as the creative source of our habitat. An example of all creation is always predetermined by some kind of destructive force, is it not? Observe what happens to the shell of a seed as the sprout of life turns toward the SUN through a process known as heliotropism. The shell is destroyed through this process. Consciousness is all inclusive for it's very nature (ENERGY) cannot be destroyed it's simply transformed through various stages of thermal dynamic realities!

Cogent - and yet the shell is not destroyed; its components remain, useful for further processes, except in the sense that all materiality is temporary. Husks tend to act as fertiliser and many are edible.Agreed, consciousness leaks through every part, particle and participle like water through a sieve - but reincarnation takes time and can be very wasteful. Put another way, euthanasia can result in you becoming a youth in Asia, so be careful what you wish for.

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